Gasser, Herbert Spencer (1888–1963)

US physiologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1944 with Joseph Erlanger for their work on the transmission of impulses by nerve fibres. Gasser was one of the first to demonstrate the chemical transmission of nerve impulses.

Gasser and Erlanger found that the smaller nerve fibres were responsible for the conduction of pain and that the speed of electrical transmission by a nerve depends upon its diameter. Gasser also performed a great deal of experiments attempting to prove that chemical transmission occurs between nerves. He was one of the first to demonstrate that the injection of acetylcholine into bird muscles or denervated mammalian muscles results in slow contraction. Acetylcholine is now known to be a neurotransmitter, a chemical that carries nerve impulses across synapses between nerves.

Gasser was born in Plattville, USA, and graduated in medicine from Johns Hopkins University in 1915. He then moved to the University of Washington, St Louis, where he began working with Erlanger on the anatomy and function of the nervous system.